Broken Hearts and Torn Up Letters
by pezzberry
Summary: She'd speak to the point of breathlessness, suffocation, nervous breakdowns. But at least she could tell people how she felt before it was too late. Before they could get away and leave her insides like a rotting corpse.
1. that's when it hits me you're gone

Santana's noticed that when all the lights were on, when it was daylight, people tended to talk about their outer lives - what they did, who they've seen, what they ate. Walking around New York City late at night, with only the streetlights illuminating her surroundings, she realized that when it's dark, people talk about their inner lives - their thoughts, their feelings, who they're in love with. They speak subjectively, they argue less, there are longer pauses. Sitting alone in darkness is weirdly and curiously creative for her. She has the best ideas during dawn or nightfall, but not when the lights are switched on. When the lights are switched on she thinks of work, projects, deadlines and errands and the shadows and shapes in the apartment become objects, not just implications of things that she needs to get done, not just background items to her thoughts.

In daylight everything becomes real. Santana likes reality, she just doesn't want to spend all of her time there. That's what a lot of people probably felt like. Because sometimes people _do_ feel that way and they _do_ want to escape. Sometimes your life feels like it's caving inwards and you're just stuck in the center waiting for all the rubble to come crashing down. Sometimes people _do _feel like they don't want to exist and they just want to curl up into a ball, and stay in a limbo stage between sleeping and awakening. Santana didn't know why she felt this way. She just did.

Santana burns and she freezes, she's never warm. She's rigid. She forgot softness because it didn't serve her. She never chased love or affection because she thought if no one gave it freely, it wasn't deserved. It wasn't that Santana was broken - far from it, she just _hurt._ She hurt every day. The absence of someone who was once there was always going to hurt. She wished she'd fought harder for her. Hadn't let her get away. Hadn't let her ruin all her favourite songs, her favourite places, her favourite books. But she did. And all Santana was were the remaining shreds of a person because she'd loved someone to the point of insanity - and they had left her with nothing but her thoughts.

Santana wished she spoke the way she thought.

Incessantly.

Obsessively.

All Consuming,

Confusingly.

She'd speak to the point of breathlessness, suffocation, nervous breakdowns. But at least she could tell people how she felt before it was too late. Before they could get away and leave her insides like a rotting corpse. Santana once read an article about how to keep somebody.

"You must learn her. You must know the reason why she is silent. You must trace her weakest spots. You must write to her. You must remind her that you are there. You must know how long it takes for her to give up. You must be there to hold her when she is about to. You must love her because many have tried and failed. And she wants to know that she is worthy to be loved, that she is worthy to be kept. And, this is how you keep her."

Santana did all of those things, and yet she'd still managed to leave in the middle of the night without a word, without a sound. Santana had even asked her how she could make her happy. And she'd looked at Santana and said that once Santana was happy, she'd be happy too. So, Santana tried so fucking hard to fix her problems, to fix herself. But she was gone before Santana even got the chance to send a genuine smile her way. For as long as she could remember, Santana was hibernating. Not living. And she just wanted someone or something to awaken her. To set her free from the endless, continuing schedule of _work, eat, sleep, _on a loop. She wanted to feel passionate about something, towards someone.

But compassion causes pain. When you feel connected to too many things, you also feel responsible for everything. And you can't turn away. Your destiny is bound with the destinies of others. You must either learn to carry the Universe or let it crush you. You have to be strong enough to love the world, yet empty enough to sit down at the same table with its worst horrors.

Without even realizing it, Santana's ex-girlfriend, if she could even call her that - they'd never officially broke up, had taught her a lot of things. Not just about life but about how it's okay to move on and it's okay to feel extraordinary about someone. She was untouchable. She was everything to Santana. Santana always used to think that the fear of getting hurt was irrational. People are going to get hurt no matter what they do, so they might as well make the experience more worth while. _Jesus Christ. _She just wanted to fall for someone, anyone even if they wouldn't love her back and she'd put her heart only in their hands and she'd clutch her chest as they pulled her heart apart one bit at a time. Santana wanted to find someone who'd kiss her and bite her lip till it drew blood and she'd have to beg them to stop. She'd let their hands roam around her rib cage and break her bones with their malicious words of discontent. She used to wonder why everyone was so afraid of unrequited love and pain because you need pain when you're laying on the floor wondering if you're asleep or awake and you're convinced there's nothing inside you. She wondered why old texts made people cry and why old pictures made people scream and she wondered why people were so afraid because it'll hurt like hell - but at least they'd feel something.

That was until she woke up to a half empty apartment and the words '_I'm sorry. I can't do this. Not now. Maybe not ever.' _scrawled onto the back page of last mornings newspaper, confirming that it was a split second decision to even tell Santana she wasn't coming back. They were it for Santana. They were totally done. It was as if in every lifetime they'd lived they had come across each other and chosen to fall in love over and over again. But relationships, whilst they are what you want at that moment, are fleeting. They don't always last. They're not designed to. People always belittle their previous relationships but the fact of the matter was that whilst you were with them, you were probably totally committed, you didn't think for a second you'd need to be nervous about asking a girl for their number or going out on a first date again, you were in it for the long run. Santana definitely was. She was either in it for the long run or not in it at all.

Looking back on relationships that could have lasted but didn't was always worst for Santana. There was always an inkling feeling in the back of her mind that said 'you two were never in love but oh God you could have been' and thinking about what could have been was something that pondered most of Santana's thoughts these days. Over thinking was Santana's forte but she did learn a lot of things from over thinking. Like, apparently someone could lose feelings for you overnight, a kiss can always be meaningless, love can be one sided, you should never beg for someones love yet she still didn't know which hurt more: being alone or being in love.

Kurt always told Santana that maybe if she'd open up a little, she'd be able to move on but he never understood that every time she pried her heart open, people were too busy swatting away the butterflies to take notice of how beautiful they were. Since the break up Santana had rarely left the apartment. She had taken classes in pretentiousness - or as other people would call it _poetry_because she needed extra credit and she thought it would maybe help with her song writing, she'd write a number one hit, get the girl and live happily ever after. Nothing ever worked like that and she was still stuck in a stupid class with even stupider people. Most of their poems are about humanity and war and shit like that - sometimes it was worse thinking about the bigger problems in the world because while she was moping about a girl not loving her back, countries were fighting and people were dying. Other poems were about love and how hard it is and whiny stuff. Like how loving someone isn't easy because some days they will be stuttering an apology and you won't even understand how to handle all the things they've done wrong. Santana didn't want to relate to it, not when there were much bigger problems, but she did.

Her favorite poem so far was about not making homes out of people. It reminded Santana of her mom, her mom always told her to never make homes out of people because they'll leave you homesick and sad. In hindsight, she shouldn't have listened to a bitter heartbroken woman, which was what she was becoming.


	2. maybe it's my fault for falling in love

Santana's father always had a pack of Marlboro Golds hidden in the corner of his cupboard, and inside his pockets. Whenever he had a dozen packs, they were gone within three days. Santana noticed that whenever he didn't have a lit cigarette between his sad, pale lips, his mind turned to blank - or worse, it turned into a cyclone of shattered dreams and unwanted memories. When he didn't have a pack of Marlboro Golds, his hands and knees trembled like a 9.3 magnitude earthquake. She was his little girl when he was happy and he was only happy when he had a cigarette. She wished she could mean as much to him as the cigarettes did. One day, her father's lungs blackened to the point of complete fragility. They were intoxicated with the ambivalent fumes he once used as a remedy to cure his sadness. Then, he was slowly fading away, like clouds that get engulfed into the pure blue of the morning sky. This made her heart crumble slowly. Her dad didn't acknowledge the fact that his anesthetic bad habit left gaping holes and bruises in his daughters heart. To her father. smoking a cigarette was his way of escaping all of his troubles. _His work, his marriage, his kids._It was a form of antibiotic which helped kill all the dreadful things that roamed and lurked in the deepest, darkest corners of his mind. It helped him to forget the loss of the woman he once called his wife when his marriage finally succumbed to the pressure. Dad didn't know his little girl envied the cigarette. He loved them more than he loved her. Her mother always warned him about them, she even warned Santana herself. She said "_Cigarettes could kill you, and they could kill the people you love too."_ Which is why when Santana was stood on the fire escape on a cold October evening, smoking a cigarette, she didn't see why she couldn't. She didn't have anything to lose.

People, Santana discovered, are layers upon layers of hidden truths. You think you know them and understand them but their motives will remain secrets, buried in their own hearts. But once you understand what people really want, you can't hate them anymore. You can fear them or envy them, but you can't hate them, because you always find the same desires in your own heart. Every person at some point in their lives wakes up in the middle of the night feeling as though they're doing something, _everything, _completely wrong. That was every night for Santana. She was the girl that other kids parents warned them about, she was the shattered pieces of glass that people should steer clear from, she was the one who was a selfish brat. And she had passed the point of caring anymore.

Sometimes Santana sits and reads through pretentious word after word until every word becomes one and nothing really means anything because she has no clue what she's reading till she stumbles across the fact that a giraffe's heart weights twenty two pounds and that when flies fall in love, they're conditioned only to loving each other, so, when one of them dies, their memory becomes blank. Santana hopes that _she _never thinks about anything as much as Santana thinks about waking up next to her at 5am.

An invisible red thread connects those who are destined to meet, regardless of time, place or circumstances. The thread might stretch, whither ir tangle but it won't break. Santana wonders if she's met a person who she's destined to meet yet or if the red tether just isn't a thing for her. Santana didn't even know if she believed in the concept. But there are an infinite number of possible worlds, so it must be true in one of them.

Santana had always wondered what she'd do if she was to discover that she only had five minutes left to say all that she wanted to say, all that she needed to say. Most people would run to the nearest telephone booth and stammer out apologies or confessions of love.

Santana had too much pride for that.

Too much pride to succumb to saying I love you just because she feels obliged. There are tens of thousands of people in the world that she could fall in love with but she's never met them. So everyone just does the best that they can with a chance encounter.


	3. everything felt so right

Whoever told Santana that loss got easier with time was a liar.

Here's what really happens: the space between the times you miss them grow longer and when you do remember to miss them again it's still with a stabbing pain to the heart. And then comes the guilt, guilt because it's been too long since you missed them last-albeit it hurts just the same as when you _did_ miss them constantly.

_Sometimes she wished it would have been _ _**that**__ kind of loss, the loss that _ _**did**__ get easier with time and didn't leave a constant burning pain that took over your entire body. As selfish and horrible as it was for her to think it, it also made sense. _

_She had never imagined this kind of pain over a girl, but she wasn't just a girl. She was the entire reason Santana got up in the morning and tried to be a better person, a person that would make her girlfriend proud and happy to be dating her. But that all had stopped once she saw that newspaper with the loopy handwriting she had began relating to familiarity and happiness._

Santana used to fall asleep with her girlfriend's fingertips burning through her skin and sometimes she could still feel her teeth pressed against her own long after she'd dropped Santana off home and her voice lit up in Santana's head and pushed away any dark clouds in her mind.

She was everything then. And _God,_ everything felt so right.

But two years later Santana came home shaking, a trail of blood and tears with her happiness leaking out of her into a puddle on the floor and she fell to her knees trying to shove every emotion back into her chest but the only thing she could do was scream "OH GOD SHE FUCKED HIM OH GOD" over and over until she's just a sobbing mess on the floor of her apartment.

Her first girlfriend had always told her to never make anyone her whole world, and Santana thought that she was crazy up until _her entire world caved in around her and she stopped finding a reason to leave her bedroom. The only time she did leave was after the brutal reality check Kurt had supplied her with._

_'Is this any way to live, Santana?'_

_'Do you think this is what she wanted for you when she left?'_

_'Doesn't being in there remind you of her constantly?'_

_'There's still a whole city of people out there, San.'_

_'What would your parents say?' That one was a low blow and a slap in the face, it was the one that had made her open her eyes and realize she couldn't keep doing that to herself. Yes, she was hurting but she wouldn't and couldn't let it control her life...not visibly anyways. She left her bed, even went as far as leaving the actual apartment to please Kurt and make him think she was slowly moving on from it all._

_But she wasn't and she never would, she was completely destroyed beyond repair and she wasn't going to let anyone even attempt at fixing her. She wouldn't open herself up like that again. Ever._

_She wished she had taken Brittany's advice all those years ago, it would have made her life a lot easier but she was young and stupid. _Santana didn't realize how naive she'd been up until _her world went cold and dark._

_She knew exactly what her problem was, too. _Her problem was that she fell in love with words, not actions.

Ideas and thoughts instead of reality.

It _would_ _be the death of her, she just knew it._

_That girl had been _the epitome of everything Santana wanted.

She'd grab Santana's waist and whisper in her ear _the dirtiest of things while still having the most innocent yet blank expression on her face, never giving away what she was saying to those around them. Santana had barely smoked while she was around, her cigarettes always conveniently going missing and never turning back up._

_All sorts of little things had made her the perfect girlfriend up until completely ripping out and stomping all over Santana's heart._

_She was completely and utterly gutted, she was an empty shell of the person she used to be and her girlfriend, ex-girlfriend, held all of the blame._

_**She**__was the reason Santana couldn't even sleep through the night anymore without waking up at least once an hour, and _ _**she**__ was the reason Kurt wasn't allowed to leave the newspaper laying around anymore, the very sight of it sending her into an awful anxiety attack._

_And yet_ six months later Santana _still_ found herself drunk texting her, confessing that she missed her-_not that she ever replied_.

Like the great F. Scott Fitzgerald had once said "Some people enter your life in a whirlwind and no matter how hard you try you can't stop thinking about them, even after they leave…especially after they leave."


	4. losing you can't be true

If someone had told a sixteen year old Santana that she would end up in New York City on Kurt Hummel's doorstep sobbing and begging for a place to stay after her girlfriend left her alone with an apartment full of memories and her own thoughts, she would have laughed in their face and probably even damaged a few bones of theirs too. Santana was anything _but _a charity case and she wasn't going to beseech Kurt into letting her crash with him. Why would she need to? She was going to college in Louisville. Her future was planned out and it was perfect. _Perfect for her mother at the least._

A month into attending college and enduring every tedious class or every fatiguing chearleading practice - Santana had enough. She _knew _that she was meant for bigger things. _Better things. _And she didn't want to tolerate having an average job. _An average life. _She was a cut above the rest and she needed to prove it.

Being a college drop out at the mere age of eighteen definitely wasn't suitable for someone who was as talented as Santana but she was going places and she just knew it. She was as sure of it as she was sure that Sue Sylvester's child was a dragon/human hybrid.

It took a lot of persistence to get a late acceptance to NYU but after countless interviews and pointless entrance exams, she was assigned a dorm and sent on her way. Her roommate was more annoying than a drunk Blaine Anderson who thought that he was a straight girl magnet. But, she didn't want to ask for any more favours because it took so long to get accepted and they could kick her out in an instant and after asking around she was only placed with the man-whore because it was the only available room left.

She met a girl called Lauren when some people from her pre-law class told her to tag along to a club on a Friday night. It had the stupidest name and it was no fun at all but at least she was making friends. Lauren was the bartender and Santana spent the entirety of her night flirting with her.

Somewhere around 3 A.M. Santana started weeping whilst complaining about her room mate, _she didn't think living here would be so hard. _Lauren said that she'd been looking for a room mate to pay half her rent because she was fired from her job a a barista for not explicit reason. It was a giant stroke of luck on Santana's part because she could _not_ handle sharing a room with someone that slept with anything with a pulse. She was pretty sure he'd even slept with a human shaped mold that someone in his art class made.

It didn't take long to move in with Lauren. She didn't bring much with her to New York. The loft wasn't very big but rent wasn't too expensive and it was close to NYU. Lauren wasn't a crazy psycho chick either so that was a plus, she reminded her of Quinn. Except she was nice all the time instead of having mood swings that could rival her own. It was nice having a friend that didn't expect anything. _Well, besides the monthly rent._

Because she had to catch up with a month's worth of work, she had to have a counselor. She didn't actually help with much but Santana was advised to take extra curricular classes to maybe up her grades in certain classes. There were modern and contemporary poetry classes available and it was the least boring thing on the list and could help kick start Santana's song writing career, so it's where she ended up going the next day. Apparently it was just a free for all where you write poetry and then you read it aloud to the class. It was nothing special but somehow hearing everyone's shitty jumble of words made her stifle laughter in the middle of the night when she couldn't sleep and her mind wandered to memories of the day.

After suffering one more year of poetry classes and experiencing worse poetry than she thought was possible, Santana didn't attend as often as she should have. It was a waste of time and she had better things to do, like watching a marathon of Scandal and burning cheese toasties by accident.

It wasn't until she had absolutely nothing to do, did she realize that her whole life revolved around her classes and her girlfriend. Besides that - it was empty. She had one friend. She didn't have any hobbies. And everything was painfully boring. She was just an empty shell of a person and it was as if all of her organs and bones had dissolved into herself and the blood from her veins had drained out and it was exhausting doing and feeling nothing.

There were so many things happening but not enough was going on. She sees so many people during the day and she wanted to be at peace with herself without wanting to know what or how they think about her. She wanted to stop the battle of voices in her head that kept telling her that she wouldn't make it, that she wasn't as great as she thought she was.

Santana found solace in writing her own songs. It was a way to escape. A way to write everything she was feeling without having to say anything aloud. She could voice all of her hopes for the future and talk about her fears and no one would have to know. Santana didn't really know what she thought or how she felt until she wrote it down.

Santana's pen was a fire escape and the words that she wrote didn't care that they were naked. Her hand was burning with her thoughts and they ran wild.

Santana had a lot of fears, not that she would let anyone know. To others she was just the girl in class who rolls her eyes anytime someone breathes to heavily or the girl in Starbucks who takes a little too long to drink one cup of coffee. She was just a background character in everybody's life. Even if they were a main character in her own.

Santana genuinely feared growing old and waking up one day to realize that she was seventy and still no one loved her. She feared being alone. She feared people leaving. She feared that she would never be special enough to be on someone's mind the first thing in the morning or the last thing they think about when they fell asleep.

She was absolutely terrified of dying unloved.

She wanted someone to hold her hand whilst she shops for the weeks groceries. She wanted someone to play with her hair when she's sleeping and she wanted someone who waited until she stopped speaking to kiss her because they didn't want her to stop talking. And she wanted someone to do these things without thinking. She wanted them to do it because they loved her.

Santana thought she had found that with _Sarah. _But Sarah wasn't that person at all. Their love story was more a story of tragedy and after Lauren moved out, leaving Santana's name on the lease, Sarah moved in. In hindsight, Santana shouldn't have asked her to move in after two months of dating - she'd usually be wary of living up to the U-haul lesbian stereotype but Sarah was different. Sarah made her happy. It was a pity that her happiness only lasted for two years. Sarah left in the middle of the night after _two years. _She had left her as if Santana was just another one night stand.

After a few days of living in an empty apartment, Santana packed her bags, told her tenant she wasn't coming back and found her way to Kurt's loft. When she first came to New York, she'd crashed with him before she had got a dorm room at NYU. She hadn't spoke to him since but she _prayed _that he'd let her stay with him.

Kurt was shocked when he opened his door to see a crying Santana asking to stay with him but he didn't hesitate to bring her into his home. It still hurt putting all of her trust in someone because it would inevitably be taken away and crushed beyond belief but she trusted Kurt. He had seen her at her most vulnerable stage. And it was sad that at the age of 20, she could only name Kurt, someone who she tormented in high school, as her only friend.

It was Spring when Santana started attending that poetry class again. She had stopped going all together because it was hard listening to stories of heartbreak whilst she was still heartbroken or listening to poems of new love for the same reason. Every person in that damn class had a story and for some reason, they were all happier than her own. The teacher, _Mr Clayton, _reminded her of a less irritating Mr Schuester. His hair was dark and curly but his eyes were a complete contrast. They were a light blue, the kind of eyes that a child would fall in love with and let any stranger with eyes similar to Mr Clayton's whisk them away into their white van because they were offered some candy and cookies. She didn't exactly think that he looked like a peadophile but if she saw him in a dark alley on the wrong night, she'd definitely walk twice as fast. Maybe he was going for the artsy, hippie kind of look but he kind of just reminded her of a high profile predatory sex offender that went by the name of _Jimmy Saville. _It was all the rage when people found out - and it got a small footnote in The New York Times, he was British so no one really knew him in New York but Santana thought he was sadistic as fuck.

No one seemed to realise that she'd skipped class for months and apparently they were still doing the same thing. Reciting any poetry they'd wrote. Santana was never a kiss ass in class but the only reason she came here was to learn and at this rate she wasn't learning anything. And she was pretty sure the prissy blonde girl that always sat at the front had stole one of Taylor Swift's lyrics hoping no one would notice. That shit was not cool.

She spent most of the time doodling in her notebook because there wasn't much note taking happening. It wasn't until a scrawny guy, probably a few years older than she was, with shaggy brown hair and wearing an outfit suitable for a homeless person went to the front did she actually start paying an ounce of attention. He said his poem was dedicated to anyone who tried to love _her _more than he does.

_Oh God. _Everyone had a _her. _Except maybe straight girls - but that was a whole other topic. Santana's _her _was a constant ringing thought in her mind. It was almost as if the name Sarah was playing on repeat or it's like a broken radio and it won't stop stuttering out the name Sarah.

The only thing that brings her back to her senses is the someone's muffled coughing. She looks up to realize that the dude is pausing for effect or whatever lame as shit stunt he's pulling because Santana just wants to hear is poem and go home. He repeats the title and begins speaking. It's silent the entire way through. He just reads. It's simple. It's good. And Santana decides then that she'll talk to him when class is over because a person who can write like that will be convenient in the future.

_If you try to sing her to sleep, you'll never sing the right song._

_And don't even get me started on bringing her flowers when she's upset because when it's a bad day - flowers aren't what's on her mind_

_And if you loved her even a fraction of what I do, you would know that she despises flowers because they remind her of funerals_

_And you'd know that she waits five minutes before drinking her coffee because when she was nine she burnt her tongue on hot milk_

_And I despise how she'll let you in and fool her into heartbreak that you won't prepare her for - because I know how that feels_

_And I still haven't recovered_


	5. great love, great tragedy

Santana often thought of the days she had spent with Sarah. She realized that she had filed them days neatly in her mind but now it seemed like everything was scattered - so scattered that her mind made fallen leaves look orderly and she had yet to find out how she should rearrange them. There was just memory upon memory tossed carelessly in her head and heart - some memories started to overlap, others just got lost in the mess. Others stuck out like a sore thumb and they were the ones that hurt the most - they pierced her already fractured heart and they could often pry her heart open with power she didn't know they possessed until Sarah left. They could manipulate their way into her subconscious and intoxicate her mind.

Some days Santana thought that she had been poisoned by enchanting words and swaying gestures. Sarah had bit her like a snake and left her to die at her own mercy.

And even though Sarah left her, Santana still couldn't shake her. Maybe one day she'd find anti-venom from elsewhere, burn the folders in her mind and rid herself of the poison.

For now, she and Sarah were still intertwined.

You don't understand how deeply you are intertwined with somebody until you try to walk away from them. Santana soon realized that her heart and _Sarah's _weren't laced together as inextricably as she thought - If Sarah could leave in the middle of the night without a word, if Sarah could _cheat _on her and not even have the guts to tell Santana herself, if Santana had to find out that Sarah left because she slept with one of her colleagues from the man himself - Santana could move on. She had to. It had taken almost two years for Santana to let go _but _she had let go.

Letting go was the easy part, moving on was difficult. And although it's painful, Santana couldn't stay hooked on a girl who left her. Sometimes she tried to reason with herself and say that she wasn't hooked on the girl who cheated on her, she was hooked on the girl who could leave goosebumps over every inch of her skin just by looking her way, she was hooked on the girl who made her feel like she had the entire universe at her fingertips and she was hooked on the girl whose name was carved onto her soul.

But that wasn't the girl she was anymore.

She was the girl who broke Santana's her heart. She was the girl who made Santana listen to _every _Coldplay album on repeat for months.

Months and months full of _Coldplay._

Santana wouldn't have listened to Coldplay if she was kidnapped, beaten and gagged by a bunch of fifteen year old hipsters and told to listen to their shitty boring songs.

_Well,_ maybe she would have but only because fifteen year olds could be fucking scary.

Santana used to think that she couldn't go on without Sarah's smile. Without speaking to her. Without hearing her voice.

Then the day came when she had to go on without her smile. Without speaking to her. Without hearing her voice.

It was so _damn _hard but the next day was harder. And Santana knew that the sinking feeling in her heart after she woke up wouldn't go away for a while. When she first woke up, everything was blank. She didn't think of Sarah. She didn't think of anything. It was an empty happiness - the first moments of waking up. There aren't any memories; everything is just a blissful blank slate.

Then she remembers losing Sarah. Oh, how Santana wished she could build a home in the time between waking up and remembering - she wished she could live in a blissful blank state. Because losing someone isn't an occasion. It isn't something that will soon pass. It doesn't just happen once. It happens constantly. It happens over and over again.

It happens when Santana gets out of bed in the morning and realizes that she's in Kurt's apartment - not the one she shared with Sarah. It happens when her favourite song plays on the radio or she overhears someone ordering her favourite drink at the local coffee shop.

Santana loses her every time she dreams of kissing her, holding her, _needing her. _Santana loses her when she goes to sleep in a half vacant bed and she loses her when she wakes up in the same circumstance. And when she wakes up, every loss just happens all over again.

Something bad was bound to happen. Santana _knew _it. Her life was perfect but she was living in a state of being afraid for the next moment because it couldn't possibly be anywhere near as good. Losing Sarah was just a message from the world. And it was inevitable.

Missing Sarah was toxic. After Sarah left she became toxic. But not all toxic people were cruel and uncaring. Sarah once loved her. _At least that's what she said. _Many toxic people have good intentions. Many of them are toxic simply because their needs force others to compromise themselves and their happiness. And Sarah _needed _to sleep with her co-worker, Mark. Like how Addison Montgomery slept with Mark Sloan when she was with Derek Shepherd in Grey's Anatomy. Except Mark Sloan made Santana question if she was actually a lesbian sometimes. The Mark that Sarah slept with, or has he so _'tenderly'_ put it "made love to", made her glad that she wouldn't touch men with a ten foot barge pole if they wanted to sleep with her.

Toxic people aren't inherently bad people. Sarah wasn't a bad person. But she wasn't the right person for Santana. And as hard as it it, Santana had to let her go. She had to move on. Life was hard enough and as much as Santana cared, as much as she still cares, she couldn't destroy herself for the sake of someone else. She had to remove herself from the painful situation of Sarah leaving her behind.

The thought of Sarah never really loving her crossed her mind from time to time. Maybe she just didn't want to be alone, maybe Santana was good for her ego and made her feel better for a while. You don't cheat on people you love because if you're truly in love with somebody you wouldn't be able to tear the clothes off another person without thinking of how it felt the first time you had sex with your loved one and the way you felt when they caressed your body and if you were truly in love with somebody you wouldn't be able to kiss another without feeling the guilt on your lips and the taste of the affair will stain your lips and the culpability will stay heavy on your heart every time you wake up to see them in your bed. If you loved somebody you would not be able to take your clothes off for another without feeling ripped bare and completely exposed like a tree that's lost all of its leaves during winter.

Sarah wasn't in love with her, not really, not at all. She just loved the way Santana made her feel. As if she put the stars in the sky. She was the centre of Santana's world. It was crazy how much Santana would have gone through to make her happy. Santana would have done anything for her.

Albeit all of this, Santana missed her. But just because you miss someone, it doesn't mean that you should go back to them. Sometimes you just had to keep missing them until you wake up one day and realize that you just don't anymore. You just miss them till you don't

When she wasn't worrying about assignments or school, she was thinking about Sarah's lips o her skin and how she wanted her scent to still linger on the pillow next to her own but t had been years and it smelt of nothing, it had barely been touched in two years. Santana dreamed of kissing Sarah and she couldn't stop thinking about touching her face whilst Sarah's hands are around her waist. Sarah was nestled into the grooves of Santana's brain and she wished that she could pick her up and toss her out.

Except she couldn't. As much as she wanted to. As much as she tried.

She couldn't.

Santana thought it was absolutely crazy how someone could lose feelings so quickly, how feelings could just deteriorate over night. Santana wasn't sad because Sarah's feelings changed. She was sad because Sarah let go of someone who was willing to change themselves into a better person. Change themselves into a better person for her. Sure Santana could move forward. But she'd never have the same feelings towards another. No matter how hard she searched.

Santana couldn't keep living in the past, the only thing that was real was right now. The only thing that existed was right now. Their touch, their laughter, their hugs, their kisses and every happy thing they did together ceased to exist. It was in the past. It was dead.

People always said that the greater the love, the greater the tragedy when it's over - Santana didn't really understand that until she was lying in bed, listening to her heart beat, or was it her blood pumping? in her ears and longing for Sarah.


	6. finding autumn

Santana used to lay awake at night out of fear that she'd see Sarah in her dreams again. The fear was useless because she didn't see Sarah when she slept. She saw nothing. Everything was dark and her dreams were empty and not fulfilling in the slightest. Yes, she feared seeing Sarah in her sleep but another part of her longed to drift into a slumber just so she'd see her beautiful emerald eyes again, just so she'd maybe get a chance to say goodbye.

But, the dreams never came and the sleep took its sweet time to join her.

It had been _two years_.

And Santana really believes that Sarah was the best and the worst thing that had ever happened to her.

All Santana wanted to do was be happy alone or maybe with someone else but she definitely didn't want to think of the girl she fell in love with when she was eighteen. She had felt everything she was ever going to feel towards Sarah now, she'd felt hatred and contempt but also an insane amount of love _but _now she'd only feel lesser versions of what she'd already felt. And maybe if she saw Sarah somewhere further down the line, she'd smile without hesitating or flinching at the sight of her because Sarah had been such a source of joy for her during their time together and Santana just wanted her to be happy.

The sun would still be the sun without Sarah, the moon would still be the moon and the sky would still be the sky - Santana just wasn't surprised by it anymore.

Santana was growing up. Santana was letting go and this time it was for good. Santana would try to love another and she'd let Sarah love someone else without crying about it for weeks and she wouldn't check to see if she'd had a hair cut and she wouldn't let their history have any meaning to her. The Sarah she knew existed somewhere. Just not here. There was too much time separating the Sarah she knew and herself so she was letting go. She was releasing the grip she'd had on Sarah for years and she was going to try and be happy.

It was Friday when she'd gotten a letter from an unrecognizable address. Once she'd turned conceded to believing that it was n fact Sarah's handwriting, she dropped it at the foot of the door and wandered back to her bed.

Sarah's handwriting wasn't good for the whole moving on thing. It gave her flashbacks. Flashbacks to when she woke to the words "I'm sorry. I can't do this. Not now. Maybe not ever." scrawled onto a newspaper.

Looking at her handwriting just _wasn't _a good idea.

Kurt comes home at six o'clock to find Santana re-watching 500 Days of Summer for what seems like the millionth time.

"Your obsession with that isn't healthy, you know that, right?" He says this about _anything _Santana watches and she's pretty sure he's just a walking, talking hyperbole. And he doesn't _mean _to antagonize Santana to no end, but that seems to be the only thing he can check off on his to do list.

"Go away. I just want to find my Autumn." Kurt looks at her as though she's insane but he just hasn't understood the masterpiece that is the pairing of Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

"What does that even mean?" It seemed like Kurt had gotten tired of Santana's hostility with the world and he wanted her to do something besides going to college or those stupid poetry classes and watching semi-good rom-coms but she wouldn't budge.

"_If - _you watched this movie you would understand that Summer, who by the way is a total bitch and I never liked her-"

"But he first time you watched this you said that she was perfect."

"I was young and foolish then Kurt, just let me speak -"

"It was a few months ago-" And it was Santana's turn to speak because Kurt was close to opening a can of worms that he wouldn't be able to control.

"As I was saying Kurt, Summer and Tom are together and she's all cynical like 'R_elationships never work blah blah blah' _but then she dates Tom which makes no sense and then they break up and on the 500th day - Do you get it? That's why it's called 500 Days of Summer, well anyway after the break up they meet again and he's all like '_I really do hope you're happy' _and it's so sad you _do not _understand this Kurt! And after all that sad stuff he runs into a girl and she says she's called Autumn which is weird because his ex girlfriend was called Summer-"

"Okay, okay Santana. I get it." He reaches over for some of the popcorn that Santana was stuffing into her mouth the whole while she was speaking before she swats his hand away and sends a glare his way. "If I tell you that you'll find your Autumn will you let me have some?"

"No. You don't deserve it Kurt. And what's that in your hand?"

"Oh. It's just some mail addressed to you. _Have you been writing to an agony aunt?"_

_"_No - I don't even know what the fuck one of those is. Just give me the letter." Santana hopes and prays to the Gods above that Kurt won't read it but it seems like her prayers aren't ever being answered.

"I'm opening it oh my God! You actually got mail. I thought -" Santana loses any moral issues she may have with murder in that moment, throws her bowl of popcorn to the floor and jumps onto Kurt as a means to get the letter away from him.

"Santana! Get off of me or I swear to God I will-"

"You'll do what? You couldn't do anything to me Kurt - now give me the letter." Kurt rips the envelope open and opens the letter up.

"_To Santana. I hope you're okay _-" Santana laughs at that because Sarah knows that she isn't okay. She hasn't been okay for a while. Kurt looks up at her with his eyebrows furrowed and his expression angry. Reading this _did _seem like a reply from an advice columnist. He would know, he's written to them plenty of times himself. "_I know it's two years late but I want to explain myself but I just want to explain some things_ -" Santana makes a move to reach for it again but Kurt's reflexes are too quick. "Oh. This is from.."

"_Sarah." _Santana doesn't mean to sound so bitter but she can't help it. "Just carry on reading, I don't wanna look at it.

"If you're sure - _I really did love you. And I know that I promised to never leave you but some promises you have to break even if you don't want to. I left you because I couldn't handle the guilt. I couldn't handle being with you. I slept with Mark because I was lonely. I was lonely because you just seemed so freaking hung up on your ex girlfriend.. What was her name? Brittany was it? Sometimes you looked at me and your eyes just seemed so empty and I could tell that you were looking for Brittany. Your expression was blank and I couldn't handle being your second choice but I know you - and I know that you didn't realize that you were doing anything wrong. You thought I left because I didn't love you? I left because I did love you but I needed someone to love me an you never could. I know that this sounds like I'm blowing my own horn but I hope that you were able to get past me - If you weren't I hope that you do soon, just don't make the same mistakes Santana. Don't look for me in your next girlfriend. I know you didn't like those poetry classes very much but I thought you were amazing and it takes a special kind of poet to recover and find the beauty in heartbreak. I hope you're doing well. I hope you'll do well. I hope that you'll be so spectacularly happy one day that you won't even remember my name - from Sarah. _Look, I know that was a lot to take in but can you get off me now?"

Santana gets up without a word and tears up the letter as she walks into her room. Every word was just like a bullet in the shape of Sarah that barely just skimmed her body. And Santana thinks about it for hours. But every conclusion she reached was the same: you need to get over Sarah. And it was going to happen.

Santana had always been a light sleeper. She'd woke up many times as a young child to the sound of a slap across her mothers face and once she'd gotten older she'd started to hear the muffled sobs coming from the kitchen at five in the morning. Every sound seemed more amplified over time, so when she woke up on a Monday morning at eight o'clock to the sound of Kurt screeching his hangers across the rail in his wardrobe, no doubt trying to impress his latest conquest after the inevitable collapse of his relationship with the one and only Blaine Anderson, world renowned idiot - Santana didn't care that she'd have to live with three hours of sleep for the day.

The first thing she'd have to do was at least make an appearance at the poetry class. She was the only one who hadn't read more than one of her poems aloud to the class and people were expecting brilliance after her first one. She scanned the room to sit next to Josh, the guy who dressed like a homeless person and wrote the poetry equivalent to what Mitch Albom supplies to the world of novels. Seemingly heartbreaking with a glimpse of happiness which is mainly towards the end.

Josh was nowhere to be seen so Santana suspected that he was just not coming to class or he was actually homeless and someone stole all of his possessions and so he walked to Vermont in the hopes that someone would be nicer there, actually acknowledge his existence and gave him a couple of dollars for food and if they were nice enough, they'd give him some clothes.

Realistically, he was probably hung-over.

Santana's stomach flipped when she saw someone who was worrying her lip and averting eye contact with her sitting in the seat next to her usual spot. Goddamnit she was beautiful. And after unneeded deliberation that lasted at least two minutes in her own mind, she decided to just sit next to her instead of sitting alone like she usually did. Like the great novelist Pearl S. Buck once wrote, "The person who tries to live alone will not succeed as a human being,"

The girl looks up at her as she's about to sit down and she sends a small smile her way. Santana thought that she was one of the most beautiful girls she had ever seen and for a split second she thought that maybe it was just a dream and some birds would come flying in and this girl would start singing with them like a real life Disney princess - but that didn't happen and Santana felt like she made a fool of herself by looming over her for a minute longer than she should have.

"I didn't think you'd sit here." Her voice momentarily wires Santana's brain to only think about _her _voice. It takes a few seconds for her to reply and she ends up more clumsy and flustered than socially acceptable.

"Uh, why?" And this girl just stares at her for a moment before answering.

"I've seen you y'know. You always sit alone. I think you like being alone." And the fantasy is over because who does this girl think she is? She doesn't know Santana.

"What are you? A major in psychology? You don't know me."

She completely ignores Santana's sarcasm. "I'd like to."

"You'd like to what? Major in psychology?" Santana has no idea why this stranger is sharing all of her hopes and dreams with her but her thought processes is cut off by the sound of her latest acquaintance giggling like a little school girl but in a non-irritating way and Santana's back in a trance.

"No - I'd like to know you Santana." And she says Santana's name so carefully and if Santana's name was a person it would be a new born and Rachel would be carrying it as if she could break a any moment.

"I'm hoping you know my name because you've heard it in class and you're not some stalker chick because that would really suck." Santana says just as Mr Clayton walks in.

They sit in silence for the entire hour and for once, time seems to be moving quickly and Santana just can't wait until she can drink some more coffee. If she doesn't drink it every few hours she gets slightly crazy.

"Maybe I'll see you around Santana?" She phrases it as a question and Santana can't help but see it as cute.

"It's only fair that you tell me your name now," Santana laughs awkwardly as she plays with her hands. "And maybe you will."

"My name's Rachel, now I've really got to go but I would love to see you again." Rachel waves and walks away and Santana is stood in a empty classroom entranced by someone who seems like her Autumn.


End file.
